Making it Better: The future of WP

Post Reply New Topic

The thing is: people AREN'T defending hate, they are defending people from what has been an ongoing issue here where unfounded and unwarranted hateful acusations of "racism","white supremecy", "nazi", etc. have been permitted for many months against a small portion of the site's population, simply for having a different view to another member on the site. Instead of trying to create a dialogue to work out differences in thoughts\views, people have had these claims made about them, and when asked for an explanation an "I don't have time to tell you" (or similar) message is posted in reply.

For example, to ask if federal officers were sent in to Portland to defend the federal buildings that had been attacked and where the local police were unable to protect them there results in a claim that the person asking was a "massive racist".

Maybe in some places around the world people have the ability to shrug that off, but to others those sorts of accusations are exceedingly hurtful, and with nothing provided to the victim of the accusation to explain what the accuser saw as being "wrong", there is no way they can defend themselves, nor remove the stain from their character...And when allowed to continue as it has here, people become rightly aggrieved.

At the moment, I know a former(?) member of the site who was attacked in forums including the Haven, is in a very low state as a result of YOUR accusations of racism aimed at him, where he has never given any indication of racism in the past, and from what we have heard suggested was simply a badly phrased analogy which you misinterpreted. Many others have simply left, believing that this is approved behaviour due to the frequency of it and the lack of responce to it.

No-one is endorsing hate here, what we WANT is for members to cease throwing hateful accusations at others on the site, either individually or as a group (see examples I posted yesterday). If a member feels another is a racist (or some other related term), or said something they interpret as "racist" (or otherwise bad\hateful), the burden should be on them to show\explain the issue, not just make a claim and leave it for the victim to try and work out what was wrong as has been the situation here for much too long.

There has to be EVIDENCE of racism in order to call it out. Saying someone's racist without backing your claim up, is defamation, can be reported and we need to then deal with it with discretion. This entire discussion got out of hand because of misunderstandings and people's emotions getting in the way of rational debate.

We will deal with personal attacks against anyone here including Alex. Discuss the issue, not the person. That has always been a WP rule.

Thanks to all those who have discussed the points, not the people.

Honestly I have never seen anyone thrown around the word racist here without there being any racism in the comments.

I still have yet to see something like:

"I like water melon"

"You're racist."



But however, denying there was ever a race issue is in fact racism itself and defending the Central Park Karen and pretending there was no racial issue there. I think this is evidence enough to call it racism.

Pretending that everyone is equal is racist itself because you are denying there is a racial issue because of systemic racism and implicit bias people have about different skin color.

Using the statistics to "prove" that black people do not get killed more by cops is racist itself because this is used to deny there is a racial issue among police officers when a black person gets killed by them.

Wanting a white pride is racism itself. Yes I did find a thread here from 2016 by a member that still posts here wanting there to be a white pride and other members trying to explain it to that user why it's so wrong. That was racism there of someone complaining about there being no white pride.

And I didn't decide all these are racist, the POC activists did.

^Defending such "Karens" is indeed racist and I do recall a member of two trying to defend her side of the story, some months back.

I will confess I have been guilty of racism here as well.

Many months back there was a thread here about some cafe in California having some dress code. I defended it by saying it was their right about what dress code they want. I saw it the same as any restaurant having dress codes and I said "call it racist if a person of color follows the dress code and they still get kicked out."

I went off on funeralxempire when he told me I was pretending there was no racism. I was one fragile white person.

I argued with other users here about why it's not racist to have a dress code and saying people of color can follow it too. I was wrong. I was racist because I was ignorant and refused to believe it.

While there is obviously incentive for racists to take a contrary position in many of these issues, arguing the contrary does not in itself make a person racist.


Also, implicit bias is and continues to be pseudoscience.

I'd say if they do it too often and I see too many of their posts of them doing it, then I assume they are in fact racist.

Welcome to Wrong Planet. This how things are here.

You have experienced first hand what your website has become. You have experienced what the users of your site experience and you now maybe understand why so many have left.

This isn't a support site. It's s war zone.

That's what happens when you just leave something on the internet and don't manage it or check in on it.

There is such a thing as simply being a contrarian. Those are useful to have around.

You are free to do so, but you know what yhey say about assuming...

Alex I am so sorry that you feel this way. Though this seems to prove that your sweeping statement that there can never be a false accusation was probably the root. Of course there can be false accusations and that groundless defamation of character can destroy people. The friends here are not racist, they are defending the right to fair judgement and clarification before condemnation.
Perhaps now you are experiencing subjectively what others feel when cornered and attacked without them understanding what they have done wrong.

@hurtloam We can still fix it. Misunderstandings caused by poor communication. It's a time to reflect and make things new. I'm not just saying this as a platitude. We have to restore trust between membership and Alex.

we are almost all on the spectrum here and need to resolve differences so we are not a "house divided against itself".

False accusations are personal attacks / abuse and against WP rules. They need be backed up with evidence.

Many of us including Admin have been in the wrong to some degree, but the fact we're engaging with each other shows we're willing to fix it.

I'm just giving Alex a reality check.

What does he expect? You can't just abandon a forum in the internet and expect roses to grow.

You can just wade back in and suggest things with no understanding of what has been going on or what the users have been experiencing.

Everybody hurts sometime. We will sort this out if we work positively towards protecting each others feelings and learn to live with differing opinions. We can do it.

Last edited by Teach51 on 26 Aug 2020, 2:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Some people still beliveve in this strange notion of "innocent until proven guilty". They also believe that each side should have an opportunity to have their side in a debate put forward.

Just because a person puts forward arguements supporting a given side does not mean they endorse them. In many cases is it because they believe in fairness and like to try and take an objective view of the debate, wanting to assist others in doing so through providing facts that would otherwise be ignored, rather than picking their side based on what they want to see, or how they choose to interpret events and so only listening to (or propagating\allowing to be propagated) "their" preferred side.

A week ago, I was sure you're right and I was willing to put a lot of energy into resolving existing conflicts and making it better.
Now I'm just tired, drained and frustrated.

If pointing out how new rules could be abused and requesting editing them to prevent such abuse is "defending hate" and the ultimate argument is "I've laid out the rules in the first post and I think any further discussion is just going to be me repeating myself" and locking the thread, I think I have better things to do than trying my voice to be heard here.

Have a nice day all. I'm taking a long walk in the woods and I recommend everyone does something similar.

Enjoy! Great advice!